Installation and getting started

To get started with WP Synchro you first need to get it installed on both the sites you want to use it on. So maybe you need to establish a WordPress site with WP Synchro to pull or push data to before you continue. E.g. establish a local WordPress site that you want to pull a live site to.

Installation for WP Synchro PRO

If you have WP Synchro PRO, you can download the newest version from my account. This will give you a .zip file that can be installed as a plugin. To do that you go to your website and log in to the backend in /wp-admin and navigate to the submenu "Add New" under menu "Plugins". Here you press "Upload Plugin"-button in the top and choose the zip file you just downloaded. This will install WP Synchro PRO.

Licensing for PRO version

To make sure your PRO version is ready for action after installation, you need to insert your license key in "WP Synchro" > "Licensing" menu. Also make sure to save it, so it will be validated. Your license key can be found on my account in the "Licensing" menu after logging in.

Installation for WP Synchro free

If you want to use the free version, it can be downloaded as a official WordPress plugin. You can find it by navigating to the submenu "Add New" under menu "Plugins" and here you can search for "WP Synchro" in the searchfield and then just install from there.

WP Synchro should now be installed and activated on both the installations you are going to use.

Setup permissions

Next step is make sure the configuration is correct, so navigate to the menu "WP Synchro" and submenu "Setup". First you need to make sure the access key is created and is a long string like 'lo2l1dx92yhdlg0g219dp5hqy8jywxu7'. If not, you should generate a new access key and save

In the setup you also choose what is allowed on this installation from a remote installation. If the site you are configured is a live production website, maybe you would want to only allow 'pull', to avoid the site from being overwritten by mistake.

When this is done, you are ready to setup you first synchronize job, that can be a database synchronization, a files synchronization or both.

Database synchronizing

To use database synchronization, you first need to make sure that database synchronization is enabled. You can use the preconfigured migrations with "Synchronize entire site" or "Synchronize entire database" to move the entire database. Or you can choose to customize what you want to move.

Custom database synchronization

First, you need to choose the preconfigured migration option "Choose what to synchronize". Then you make sure you enable the option "Synchronize database" under the headline "Data to synchronize", to indicate that we want the database transferred or at least some of it.

When this option has been enabled, the database transfer settings will be available.

Database backup

Choose if you want to make a backup of the current data in the database tables before they are overwritten - It will only make a backup of the tables that are migrated, so it is pretty fast. The database backup will be kept on the target system in wp-content/uploads/wpsynchro with a filename like this: database_backup_5cc1c31c0f1a0.sql.

We recommend enabling this just in case something goes wrong.

Search/replaces

The first thing to define is the search/replaces you want to do in the database data. This can be very site dependent. Almost all of the time you would want to search/replace the url in the transfer, which is automatically setup and cant be changed.

Add more search/replaces if you have a custom need - Otherwise the standard ones do the job in almost all cases.

Choose data to preserve

After settings up search/replaces, you need to choose if you want to keep the active plugin setting (meaning that you will have same plugins active after synchronization). We recommend to enable this option.

Tables to synchronize

Last, but not least, you choose what database tables to synchronize. You can either choose to synchronize all of them or just specify those you want to transfer.

Files synchronizing

To use files synchronization, you first need to make sure that files synchronization is enabled. You can use the preconfigured migrations with "Synchronize entire site" or "Synchronize all files" to move the entire web root. Or you can choose to customize what you want to move.

Enable files synchronization

First, you need to choose the preconfigured migration option "Choose what to synchronize". Then you make sure you enable the option "Synchronize files" under the headline "Data to synchronize", to indicate that we want the files transferred.

When this option has been enabled, the files migration settings will be available.

Choosing files to synchronize

WP Synchro can be customized to every need in file migrations. You can quick add the locations you want. You can also add specific paths or files you want synchronized, with a specific migration strategy. You can add as many locations as you want.

Adding custom synchronization locations

If you want full control over what to sync and how to do it, you can add files and directories via the buttons "Add from outside web root", "Add from web root" and "add from wp-content".

This will show a popup with the exact files and directories in you system, so you can browse and choose exactly what you want to synchronize. This is very powerful and gives you full control.

This presents you with the choice of migration strategy - Keep or Clean.

Keep: Will not delete any leftover files and directories on target system - Faster, safer but will leave old files

Clean: Will delete any files or directories found on the target system, but NOT found on the source. This is the default behavior.

Exclusions

If you want to exclude certain directories or files from the transfer, you can add them here. Both files and paths can be placed here. Another example can be "vendor" or "node_modules" because they can be quite large. So it depends a lot on the needed synchronization.

Per default WordPress core directories and files are excluded, as well as WP Synchro plugin and data files. This is to prevent total chaos on synchronizations.

Starting the synchronize process

When everything is set up and configured, we are ready to go.

BUT, before you run your new and shiny synchronization, we recommend making a backup of both source and target environments to be sure nothing bad will happen.

We try to test on as many environments and setups as possible, but this is quite complicated software that is affected by a range of server configurations, which can differ widely among hosting providers. If you do experience problems, lets us know, so we can fix it as soon as possible.

When backup is done, just hit the "Run now" button on the overview, and everything should run smoothly.

WP Synchro PRO

WP Synchro is located in Denmark and is a part of the Danish company SuccesProjekter ApS. Besides doing WP Synchro, SuccesProjekter also creates custom solutions in WordPress and have been doing that since 2012.